his puzzled glance, she explained. “I heard you talking to Mr. and Mrs. Robbins at Oscar’s yesterday. Earth Unfiltered?”
“Oh. Yeah. In my travels, I stumbled upon the crew in their early days. Joined them. Learned a hell of a lot, at first from just humping shit from place to place, then I did more. Research, camera work, a little writing.”
“Wow.”
It had been wow so much of the time. But there’d been arduous treks, long delays, bad reactions to strange foods...and, finally, a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction. “Traveling to remote corners of the world has a way of making one feel small. And unconnected.”
Mac was looking at him funny. He tried to make a joke of it. “Did I just say that out loud?”
“A person can feel alone anywhere,” she said, then turned her back to put the plates and utensils in the dishwasher.
A weird vibe entered the room. Zan rubbed at the back of his neck, trying to dissipate the sense of needle-toed fairies dancing over his skin. Christ, he’d thought conversation would get him comfortable with Mac, bring them back to friendly footing. But so far...
“Who’s Simone?” she suddenly asked.
“What?” It came out like a squawk.
“Simone. You talked about her in your sleep last night.”
Simone. Zan squeezed shut his eyes, saw her golden tan, her wild, streaky hair, heard her throaty laugh. They’d been two of a kind, each recognizing the other instantly. Wanderers. Adventurers. Nomads.
People tied to no one.
“Zan?”
He cleared his throat. “She was part of the documentary crew the last couple of years. We were...coworkers.”
“Lovers.” She didn’t say it like a question.
“For a time we shared a bed on occasion.” He glanced up at Mac, but her back was still to him. “For a very short time. Neither one of us was interested in anything remotely permanent.”
Mac’s head bobbed in a nod. “Where is she now?”
He hesitated.
“You wanted her to come back.” She shut the dishwasher door with a clack. “That’s what you said last night, anyway.”
Oh, shit.
“She can’t. She died.” He winced, hearing the bald way he’d said the words when Mac stiffened. “I’m sorry to put it like that. It’s just...”
Mac turned and leaned back against the counter, regarding him with serious eyes. “It’s just...what?”
“It was such a random thing. The act of a moment.” Zan scrubbed his hand over his face. “We’d been to the Russian steppes and the Sahara Desert and the Solomon Islands. Cozied up to tribal warlords and run from violent warthogs. Scaled slippery waterfalls and explored deep, bat-filled caves. We ate things that make my belly cringe thinking about, not wanting to offend our hosts. Any one of those things could have ended in death.”
Mac reached for a fresh glass, filled it with water, then brought it over to him. Grateful, he took a long swallow. “It was in Berlin. We were walking to lunch, the lot of us. Simone was trailing behind, looking at her phone, checking the weather for our next day’s flight. As mundane as that.”
“And?”
“And she stepped off a curb without looking. A truck took her out. The driver couldn’t stop in time—there was no time.” He closed his eyes. “No time left for Simone.”
“I’m sorry.” Mac’s voice was low. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
He was sorry that Simone was gone, too. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
And how sorry was it that he wanted to turn into Mac’s body so badly. Bury his head between her breasts and bury his sadness in the familiarity of her body. Lose himself in his lust for her that apparently hadn’t dissipated in ten years.
Hold her as if she was more than just an old, old friend.
AS SHE CLIMBED out of her shabby sedan, Tilda Smith glared up at the gathering clouds, hoping a challenging stare would stave off the predicted rain...at least for the time it would take her to collect the groceries stored in the backseat and cart them up the walkway and steps that led to the fancy house.
She took another quick peek at the place, exhorting herself not to be intimidated by its amazing lakefront location, its immense size, the wealth that it testified to. The area surrounding Blue Arrow Lake had been home her entire life and the divide between the haves and have-nots something she’d breathed in like the clean mountain air.
Most locals didn’t resent the rich who had homes on the choicest coves or the most stupendous mountainsides. Without them, what jobs would they have? The way things were, there was a need for grocers and Realtors and restaurateurs to serve the needs of the affluent who came up the hill with their inherited fortunes or with the money they made from TV or tech or investing other loaded peoples’ dollars.
Most locals didn’t feel the least bit used by the well-heeled whose lawns they tended, whose food they prepared, whose houses they cleaned.
A few locals, though, ended up providing services of an entirely different nature. And to Tilda’s mind, they were used.
She pushed that thought away, along with the pang of grief that accompanied it. Neither were productive and she didn’t have the time or energy for anything beyond what would keep her solvent—making her rent, filling her gas tank, filling her belly and paying for the online courses that were her only way of getting an education beyond her high school diploma.
At twenty-one, she was on track for getting her degree in biology in another six years.
Shoving a long swathe of her wavy brown hair off her shoulder, she bent to scoop up the grocery bags. Her boss at Maids by Mac, Mackenzie Walker—whom Tilda also counted as a friend—had passed over a list and the cash to pay for the items. She understood that Tilda didn’t have the extra to float the purchases until getting back to the office and handing over the receipt.
She shut the back door of her car with her hip and gave a cursory glance at the upscale vehicle she’d parked beside. Only two things interested her about automobiles: Did they run or didn’t they? But it was hard not to admire the gleaming black finish and tinted, smoky windows of the luxury ride. By comparison, her dented two-door with its faded paint looked like something that had been abandoned in a weedy, empty lot for an untold number of years.
Exactly what Roger Roper had claimed when he sold it to her, as a way to account for the astonishingly low mileage.
Tilda had known he was lying—she figured he’d fooled with the odometer—but the price had been right, and so far it had been kind to her.
Unlike the weather. As she moved toward the front door, big, cold drops shook out of
